A number of companies have become actively involved in the delivery of online news. These companies include, for example, Topix, Google News, Digg, Drudge Report, Technorati, and other primarily web-based companies. Further other traditional mainstream media sites have been actively involved in the delivery of online news, such as CNN, New York Times, Fox News, CBS News, etc. “Topix” is a registered trademark of Topix, Inc., “Goggle” is a registered trademark of Google, Inc., “Digg” is a registered trademark of “Digg Inc., “Technorati” is a registered trademark of Technorati, Inc., “CNN” is a registered trademark of Cable News Network, Inc., “New York Times” is a registered trademark of The New York Times Company, “Fox News” is a registered trademark of Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation, and “CBS News” is a registered trademark of CBS Broadcasting Inc.
Recently, companies like Sphere.com and Google have permitted webmasters to insert widgets onto their web pages. For purposes of the present invention, a “widget” is a small standalone software application that can be installed (embedded) and executed within a web page by a computer end user.
Widgets that detect the content on the web page in which they are embedded and, based on that content, display either related news story links or advertisements are known. For example, Sphere.com's U.S. Pat. No. 7,587,381 describes a method for displaying news story links and Google's “Google AdSense” technology that is described in its U.S. Patent Application Pub. No. 2004/0059708 describes a method for displaying advertisement. However, conventional systems, like as those just described, fail to provide a focus on events. Events, unlike news or advertisements, are planned at a specified time and location. Events, in this context, can be anything from music concerts to more frequently recurring items, such as a local art museum's hours of operation.
Currently, ticketmaster.com displays a widget on third-party websites, such as the one shown in FIG. 1 at 100. FIG. 1 shows a computer-based display for ticketmaster.com for musical events for which tickets are on sale. The event artists are shown at 102 and the music categories are shown at 104. This same type of information will obtain by a System User clicking on one of the other icons at 106, namely “Sports,” “Arts & Theater,” or “Family.” The display fails to provide additional information about a specific event based on a widget configured to data mine the host website to obtain such event information, permit ticket sales, and pay commissions.
Noting the conventional systems discussed above, there is a need for event-based widgets that provide greater flexibility for webmasters and System Users to configure the widgets to provide greater granularity for searching for and obtaining event information.